GIna devotees only - how & when didyou start trying to put baby in a routine?

[bodenbetty]

I don't want to start anything contentious - just windering how to go about starting teh whole routine thing. DD is only 10 days so probably a little young just yet but am trying to think ahead. her idea of night & mine don't coincide but have stared feeding her in the dark from 7pm on hoping she will get teh message!

Bodenbetty - I think this turned into a bit of a for/aginst thread which I see isn't what you were after! Just to let you know I started DS in GF routine at 1 week, worked really well for 2-3 days then he became groggy and floppy, turned out he had reflux and wasn't keeping enough food down so we ended up in hospital which mucked it all up! After 2 hellish weeks of a distressed refluxy baby we tried again (4wks by this time). It took a week to get him mostly there (crying greatly reduced in a few days) and just after 8/9 wks he was sleeping 11-7 at ngihts and was generally much much happier.

I'd say start doing things like waking her in the day if she's sleeping for longer than a few hours and try to get her to eat as much of her food as possible during the day. Also the sleep associations are important so start those too. The rigid routine could probably wait a bit. It is more flexible than she makes it sound too so don't feel totally pressured into exact times - I did at first until it was established but then found the odd day a week of stretching out naps/waking times didn't hurt. Most important thing in GF routines to me was the advice about overtiredness - this was very true for DS so sometimes it was worth breaking the routine to combat that.

One more point (that's it, promise) - you didn't say if you were a 1st timer? If you are a you try the GF thing and it doesn't work for you, stop doing it, the worst thing about it is that you can feel like you've feeled if it doesn't work and that's not the case. I would say it's more an issue of it not suiting mum rather than baby but your happiness is just as important. I aslo agree the baby whisperer book is a good add-on to the GF book but a bit more laid back.

Enjoy your DD! give her lots of cuddles and love and you'll find everything else slots in

sorry - typo: feeled=failed

'contrary'

when elsie was ten days old enid she was in a routine, would you like to tell me what is about that? would love to hear it...honest.

LOVE the placenta thread Hunker. Especially snafu's more convenient, hygenic alternative.

I see the thread about a Certain Brand of laudry product got deleted

Message withdrawn

shhh! not really!

nothing particularly about routine per se

just at label of contrary on a 10 day old baby

Liquidclocks - I agree re: the overtiredness - for me that was the most helpful thing. I don't think I necessarily would have spotted that tiny babies are knackered 2 hours after getting up, and that putting them down before they get all worked up made a huge difference to getting through the day. So I suppose I just took bits and pieces from Gina - don't remember doing feeds on time particularly, and we'd already decided to give both ds's a bottle from about 3 weeks anyway, so that wasn't anything we didn't want to do.

Horses for courses...